Lets keep this short because over the next few months, if you’re interested, you’re going to be reading a lot of rumours about the next Xbox and the Playstation 4.

Yesterday, MCV reported that the next Playstation and the successor to the Xbox 360 will be shown at E3 2012. Now, it’s important to realise that shown doesn’t mean revealed and announced, rather that their existence will be confirmed. MCV apparently have it on good authority that the show in LA will tease to consoles’ existence at the same time (not literally) as Nintendo confirms details of its upcoming Wii U.

This is somewhat of a surprise. “Why?” I hear you think (not literally). It’s a surprise so a number of reasons:

Firstly, Sony has long touted that it plans to Playstation 3 to have a 10 year life cycle and many have used this fact to argue that we won’t see the PS4 for a while. However, “10 year life cycle cycle” is a phrase that actually affords Sony a degree of flexibility. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they won’t release another console within that period, but could insinuate instead that they plan to support the PS3 for 10 years. Clearly Sony don’t want to be in the position they were in when the current generation of consoles was launched, continually trailing Microsoft in units shipped due to the Xbox 360 launching a year earlier than their console.

Secondly, a synchronised reveal would be the first time in the history of E3 that the contributions from all three manufacturers are directly comparable. That said, Nintendo’s offering is likely to be decidedly less “hardcore” than that from Microsoft and Sony.

MCV claims that its third-party publishing sources claim Microsoft has signalled to partners that E3 2012 will be the place for an official announcement. Sony, for the reasons detailed above, are unlikely to want to feel like the Tyson Gay to Microsoft’s Usain Bolt this time round, their execs having made clear in the past that they do not intend to be left behind again.

Whilst Sony might have stalled a little this time round, both theirs a Microsoft’s numbers pale in comparison next to the success Nintendo enjoyed with the Wii. Nintendo intends to reveal the pre-Christmas launch date and price of the Wii U in June and so strangely enough, by revealing their products together, Microsoft and Sony could gain some advantage by effectively thwarting Nintendo’s plans for continued dominance.

As usual with this type of story, facts are more elusive than the Higgs boson, but like CERN, we’ll keep looking and updating you as when we think we’ve glimpsed something worth reporting.